


last known surroundings

by andibeth82



Category: Lost
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Lost: Post-Island, Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 22:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He carries her home the back way and notices the skirt is stained with grass and mud, consequences of falling out of the hammock after too much wine and a few whispered promises of forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	last known surroundings

**Author's Note:**

> Series of vignettes from James' point of view, mostly DHARMA memories interspersed with post-Island living.

White eyelet skirt

(straight, lined)

75 degrees and sunny, she wore it for the first time with flowers in her hair and a pink cotton top.

 

“This okay?” Standing in front of him because they don’t have a mirror, hands back-pressed against the dresser in nervous expectation waiting for his approval

it’s more than okay and he knows he ain’t fooling anyone, red face be damned.

“Picture perfect, Blondie.”

Barely there hint of a smile as she takes a step forward (“I bought it just for you,” he’ll later marvel in amusement at the fact that anyone would ever do anything _just for him_.)

 

_He acquired the record player from a pawn shop, told the man behind the counter it was for his parents_  
 _couldn’t admit he wasn’t ready to let go_  
 _couldn’t admit he was afraid that if he did, the memories would stop._

 

He carries her home the back way and notices the skirt is stained with grass and mud, consequences of falling out of the hammock after too much wine and a few whispered promises of forever.

“We’ll throw it in the laundry,” he offers, apologetic smile as they slip into bed and she tells him its okay

(because the truth is, she doesn’t really care.)

 

+

 

The last box is the heaviest

(mentally, physically, emotionally)

it’s not much, just a few things from her kitchen but they unpack together anyway and when she reaches for the tape or to fold back a flap, her finger brushes against his hand. She pretends not to notice while he turns his head towards the window in cautious denial and she finds it a little funny

kids on a first date, scared and excited at the prospect of something more.

He trips over food boxes littering the floor, Dharma branded “everything under the sun” he jokes, says they should turn the place into a warehouse

(because being sarcastic is the only defense he’s ever known)

cracks a beer and she cracks a smile, puts the electric mixer on the counter next to the ceramic jar and calls it their home.

He drinks, smiles because for the first time it feels like it really is.

 

+

 

One sip too many and she’s on the floor of the bedroom nursing a silent daze (he’s not much better, sitting on the mattress shirt off and legs up.)

“Poor…life decision.”

She disagrees with a shake of her head and he lazily brings an arm down to brush the neck of the empty vodka bottle.

“Not you.

This.”

 

The pen he picked up, the letter he wrote, the man he became. The trigger he pulled, the chain he tightened, the past he ran from.

 

“I killed a man.”

She contemplates rolling the joint that’s hidden in the sock drawer, thinks better of it.

“So did I.”

“On the Island.”

One move brings her upright and she closes her eyes against a spinning room.

“So did I.”

Drinking opens him up and he’ll start on tangents about regrets and choices and never bein’ right no matter what and when he stops to take a breath, that's when she’ll take his head in her hands and press her thumb to his cheek.

“James?”

(Red eyes, glassy, a little bit sad.)

“Yeah?”

“Shut up and kiss me.”

 

+

 

There’s no TV in their house

(modern conveniences he can do without but it’s the one thing he wishes existed)

so instead of staring at the tube he listens to the radio, hums quietly to the strains of music that filter through the speakers.

 

“Why are you readin’ that again?”  
( _Carrie_ , fifth time, he knows because the cover’s worn in all the right places.)

 

“I just am.” It’s a one-two look-over as she curls onto the couch and stretches her legs, he sighs and rubs his barely-there beard.

“Ain’t you worried you’re gonna get bored or somethin’?”

Bored of him, of them, of this, of playing house, of all the things he once did before they blew up in his face with a bag of cash and a prison sentence and a future he was too scared to embrace.

She shakes her head and goes back to her reading.

“Not really.”

He watches her eyes as they move across page and wonders what she thinks of it all

because as usual, her face tells him nothing.

 

_He dog-ears his own pages of Carrie now (once a week, like clockwork) and when he dreams it’s in yellow technicolor, a world tinted with a soundtrack of seventies songs and purple shirts. When he wakes, it’s a world like the one he told her about on the sub, when he promised her Ann Arbor and the Dallas Cowboys and buying Mircosoft._

_He writes letters that he keeps in an old music box, tells her every day that he’s still got her back and ignores the people who tell him he shouldn’t be holding onto the past_

_(he’s spent his whole life doing that and good or bad, Sawyer and LaFleur and James, his past is all he has left.)_

“Thank you for believing in me,” _he’ll whisper the words to an empty room, drunk on memories he created for himself, that time she said I love you and that time she didn’t leave._

 

+

 

They keep to themselves and when she smiles it’s just for him

(she passes him outside, he acknowledges with a subtle head tilt)

but it’s just a cover before they reconvene behind closed doors and drawn shades and sometimes, they don’t make it from the living room.

 

Tangled in sheets they do make it to bed, eventually.

 

He doesn’t mind sneaking around because it’s fewer questions to answer and fewer comments to dodge, but then one day she takes his hand in public

(a house meeting, she made the cookies.)

He looks down, interlaced fingers pressed against the upholstery and when Horace asks she says yes.

“We’re together.”

 

“You can’t change the past, James” _and he had spun out of control, refused to accept the fact that the words were true because even if they were, why should he believe it (it hits him sometimes, the fact that he left behind everything that he wishes he could get back.)_

_A happier life than he’d ever known. The ring at the bottom of the ocean._

_And her._

 

+

 

They use their eyes more than words and she’s gotten good at knowing when he doesn’t want to talk, almost as good as he’s gotten at knowing when she’s hiding something behind “I’m fine” ( _no you ain’t_ and she normally doesn’t contest his words because she knows she’ll lose the battle.) So when she asks, he figures what the hell.

“It’s just.” He shrugs once and reaches for the salad bowl, avoiding her gaze.

“Thought you didn’t want children.”

She stops with her fingers halfway to the bread, turns to the side and he wonders if she’ll ask what made him say it. He’s surprised when she gives him a small smile.

“I never said that.”

 

_He picks her up after school, holds her hand as they cross the street_  
 _marvels sometimes at how much she reminds him of the mother she never met_  
 _the mother who was never even hers._

 

It’s not until she walks out of the bathroom that he thinks to ask again.

“So…do you? Want kids, I mean.”

She looks at him in answer and it makes him think of the ring hidden under the floorboards, just out of reach. That night he dreams of raising their child.

A girl, named after her sister

because that’s what she would want most of all.

 

+

 

_“Daddy, read me a story,” and he reads the one likes best, the one about a princess with long blonde hair who spent her days locked away in a tower, never knowing her knight in armor was only a few strides away._

_It’s only later that it hits him,_

_the fact that his own daughter has told him I love you more times than she ever got a chance to._

 

He stands on the porch and looks up, notices she’s painted the trim recently

(it’s brighter yellow than the rest and somehow in three years he's he acquired a house and a relationship and right, _tiger don’t change its stripes_ )

remembers her face when he tells her about that time they were both scared to call this place home

and her face when she says it’s the only one she’s ever had.

 

-END


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